MediaCommons, Computers and Writing, etc.

Early this week, I participated in a few days' long meeting about MediaCommons, and I'm excited about where it's going. If you're going to be at Computers and Writing, I hope you'll check out my presentation about MC. The presentation will be in the format of a user's guide to MC, after the fashion of Collin's presentation at CCCC, which was terrific. Here's my abstract:

Peer-to-Peer Review, Metadata, and Distant Reading: Introducing MediaCommons, a New Scholarly Network

MediaCommons is a project of the Institute for the Future of the Book. A scholarly network-cum-academic press, MediaCommons will take advantage of the affordances of web technology to create what has been termed a peer-to-peer review process. This process will be transparent, onymous, and publicly accessible online. Like the CCC Online archives, MediaCommons will use metadata including traffic, Technorati tracking, and Google Analytics data in order to assess the circulation of scholarly discourse about new media. We encourage scholars to use images, audio, and video in their projects; reviewers may also post their comments in the form of podcasts or videos if they like. This presentation will serve as a user's guide to MediaCommons, a brief review of existing MediaCommons initiatives such as In Media Res, and an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and offer valued feedback about the project.

Now if I can just manage to do something on Sunday, I will actually be presenting every day of the conference. Behold my current C&W schedule:

Thursday, May 17, 1 pm-4 pm

Getting Started With Open Source Software

Bradley Dilger, Matt Barton, David Blakesley, Troy Hicks, Clancy Ratliff, Charles Lowe, Jeremy Tirrell

Friday, May 18, 10:30-11:45

H. Web Sensible Selves: Individual and Institutional Identities in Digital Writing
Spaces
Darren Cambridge: Deep-Web Sensible Selves: Writing the Responsive Learning Organization

Byron Hawk: Identifying Web 2.0: Institutional Identities and the Grounds of Research

Clancy Ratliff: Peer-to-Peer Review, Metadata, and Distant Reading: Introducing MediaCommons, a New Scholarly
Network

Saturday, May 19, 9:00-10:15

I. Roundtable: Digital Writing Research(ers): Institutional Review Boards: Mapping the Issues for Organizational Position Statements

Will Banks, Michelle Eble, Gail Hawisher, Heidi McKee, James Porter, Clancy Ratliff, Cynthia Selfe, Pam Takayoshi, Laura Gurak

But back to MediaCommons for a moment. You may have checked out In Media Res before, but if not, I strongly encourage you to do so, and leave comments. One in particular that I recommend for rhetoricians is Fay Ginsburg's blurb about Amanda Baggs, a brilliant autistic woman whose video "In My Language" is easily one of the most sophisticated and sensitive analyses of language I have seen in a very long time. I subscribe to and watch all the videos on Baggs' channel on YouTube, but "In My Language" is my favorite, followed closely by "Being an Unperson" and the three-part interview with Laura. Here's "In My Language" -- the first half is in Baggs' native language; the second is what she said, translated into English: